Gossip

Wilful sabotage of mobile roaming bill, by Microsoft Network

by Sniffer | posted on 14 February 2005

A cry of anguish emerged from a corner of the 3GSM Congress here in Cannes. Yes, it was The Boss, who had lost his "free WiFi" card, and was connecting over 3G. Except, he wasn't...

From the imprecations uttered, it was easy to deduce what had happened. He'd plugged in his 3G card, and instead of getting a 3G signal, could only get on GPRS. Then he'd fired up MSN Messenger.

"There is a new version of the software," it said. "You must download it to continue."

We think the cry of anguish wasn't just because he had to wait while six megabytes of trivial upgrade came down over his expensive GPRS connection. We think it was more to do with the fact that his attempt to read his email was sabotaged by the data stream from MSN.

Time someone inside Microsoft told MSN about mobile data, we suggest.